D3's Thoughts on Watchmen

Hrrm...

I am mixed on Watchmen the movie. It was good, and I wonder if I would have liked it if it wasn't based on the comic book. I don't think it would have been confusing, because I think Zach Snyder spent too much time filling in blanks. There wasn't much for the viewer to think about, because most things were explained in fairly short order. Too much exposition. And too much stop action - just let the thing roll....we're trained to watch fight scenes - just let 'em go.

Too much time spent on seemingly mundane details. Like how the blood got on the pin. We didn't need a stop action there. It would have been fine to show us that bit when Rorschach picked up the button on the street. Preferable, in fact, as I felt like he was hitting us in the face with it. He didn't need to stress that this was an interesting element. It was interesting, but not really THAT important.

There were a lot of good things about the movie, but there were also a lot of things I'd rather have seen done differently. I think that being so driven to follow the comic book became a detraction after a while. There wasn't much room left for originality. I also think that, while the Rorschach prison scenes were cool - they should have been cut...or cut down. And I thought it was a good contrast in the comic how Rorschach lied at first, and then was asked again later....and then told what was really going on.

Oh - and the scene where he killed the guy with the cleaver....way over the top. I thought all of the violent scenes were a bit much. Very little left to the imagination there. We could have filled in those blanks. And was it me, or were there many times with Dr. Manhattan when you couldn't get away from the fact that you were looking at a green screen?

I think it would have been better (or rather, I'd have preferred) to have had a scene where unknown persons (or even Ozymandius to... Bubastis , who knows?) were talking at the beginning of the movie about each of the characters. A kind of "In order to know how I saved the world, you must first understand how I developed the plan..." This would have saved us from the 'background' scenes of each character.

Speaking of Ozymandius, I thought he was painful. His speech patterns and pronounciations were maddening. I found it hard to believe that this guy had the plan to save the world.

I know there was a desire to give everybody what they wanted, but after about 2 hours, I was kinda like..."ok, let's wrap this up..." The fight scenes were well done, but too long. The one in the alley was overlong, but not as bad as the prison one.

Hmmm...still mixed. I guess I'm going to have to mull it over some more...I may update with more thoughts in the near future.